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Amazon's spokesperson said the company uses a combination of humans and artificial intelligence to monitor the 22 million-plus pieces of customer feedback received weekly for product quality and safety concerns. Amazon may remove products or suspend an account if the seller violates its policies.
"We work hard to make sure customers receive high-quality products when they order from our store," the spokesperson said. "We have robust processes in place to ensure customers receive products with sufficient shelf life.
"If customers have concerns about items they've purchased, we encourage them to contact our Customer Service directly and work with us so we can investigate and take appropriate action," the spokesperson added.
[...]Amazon says it feeds data from suspended listings and accounts into its AI systems so they can get better at detection and at blocking suspicious activity. Human moderators can also trigger an investigation if they receive feedback suggesting a product is unsafe. In the food category, Amazon uses a database called "Heartbeat" to monitor customer commentary through reviews, phone calls, emails and seller feedback for safety issues.
Even with all these tools, several consultants who advise sellers say Amazon needs to rely on more than just customer complaints and refunds to catch expired foods. They argue that Amazon needs to devise new strategies to police the marketplace more effectively and improve detection of questionable products, while strictly enforcing its policies when third-party sellers break the rules.
Also at:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @02:01AM (1 child)
"I am firmly of the opinion that if something doesn't have a year on it, every time the expiration date rolls around it is good again for the two weeks preceding that date."
https://xkcd.com/737/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @02:03AM
Randall Munroe is an asshole.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday October 22 2019, @02:26AM (2 children)
just turn it over and use the end that doesn't have mould..
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @02:39AM (1 child)
Your grandmother is a winner.
Expiration Date High Score [xkcd.com]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday October 22 2019, @03:19AM
I think they should add a requirement that you eat the entire product and not die to get the high score.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @02:39AM (4 children)
Meanwhile bankrupting local stores with fresh food products. It is said that Amazon has yet to make profit and is actively bankrupting profitable local businesses in order to take over their business. And _then_ it will become profitable after raising prices. (It also uses other services for shipping, which mostly run on public money.)
They always talk about revenue and avoid speaking of profit, but profit is all that matters, otherwise it is a fraud. Amazon indeed is a fraud.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @02:42AM (2 children)
AWS. Revenue == Profit
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @02:57AM
Indian company InfoSys has just had some whistle-blowers saying it has been inflating profit. How long before AWS is exposed as unprofitable? (unprofitable spyware ?) Electricity also costs money. And all that spyware they install on their machines to monitor users and steal their data. And maybe mine some cryptocurrencies paid for by users.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Tuesday October 22 2019, @01:15PM
Umm, no. Revenue is the money that gets paid to you, before subtracting the money you paid to other people.
If you pay $10 for a widget, and sell it to me for $12, then your revenue from that transaction is $12, while your profit is only $2.
If you instead sold it to me for $9, then your revenue is $9, and your "profit" is a $1 loss. And I likely conclude that either the widget was a "loss leader" to try to lure me into buying more profitable items at the same time... or you're trying to drive your competition out of business so that you can raise prices. Both are pretty common.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @05:22PM
Really? Please cite your sources.
I'll go first: https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/profit_margin [ycharts.com]
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/gross-profit [macrotrends.net]
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-profit-doubles-to-set-a-record-high-for-a-fourth-consecutive-quarter-2019-04-25 [marketwatch.com]
Feel free to disagree with Amazon's business model and business practices, but I'd suggest applying some critical thinking to the sources you listen to. Put another way, you think it is realistic that one of the largest retailers in the world, rivaling Walmart and Target in scope, whose market capitalization is in the billions, could have lasted 20 years and not turn a profit? I'll admit it is possible, but I'd suggest that should be enough to "hey, wait a second" to trigger doing some independent research rather than just accepting the statement at face value.
(Relatedly, how did that comment get to +4 Insightful?)
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday October 22 2019, @03:31AM
This could work ... it would simultaneously address:
So many benefits.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @04:01AM (5 children)
I used a can of diced tomatoes the other day, even though it had a 2016 expiration date.
By used I mean that I cooked and ate the contents, not that I threw the can at a squirrel.
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday October 22 2019, @05:40AM (3 children)
Yes, everyone does.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @06:00AM (2 children)
As an immortal jellyfish i am deeply offended by your comment.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday October 22 2019, @06:21AM
Even an "immortal" jellyfish will eventually die. Just not of old age.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday October 22 2019, @06:28AM
220m [sealifebase.ca] is not that deep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by richtopia on Tuesday October 22 2019, @03:36PM
I volunteered at a food sorting center for donated food; they had a chart on the wall listing what they considered acceptable ranges for expiry. Similar to the canned food section of this document: http://site.foodshare.org/site/DocServer/Foodshare_Food_Dating_Guidelines_revised.pdf?docID=5901 [foodshare.org]
The quick summary:
Vegetables are some of the shortest (1-3 years depending on acidity, your tomatoes are high acid)
Meats and beans can keep longer
The can may be dented but cannot be swollen (botulism)
For canned products, keeping something longer than a few years is not a large health risk. The bigger issue is the nutrition of the contents degrades; if you eat a ten year old can of green beans you are probably only gaining some dietary fiber from that meal.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:31AM (1 child)
Before I met my wife's grandmother who lives in Florida she told me a story from her childhood to try and explain the kind of person her grandmother is.
When my wife was thirteen or so she flew to Florida from Alaska to visit with family and enjoy the various things people claim to enjoy in Florida. She flew down early to spend time with her grandparents before her parents were able to fly down. During this time period the weather was supposed to be good, and the expectation set by her grandmother was that they would go to the beach and such things people in Florida claim are good.
As they were getting ready to go to the beach my wife was asked to retrieve something from the pantry, and returned with an expired item. Her grandmother was concerned, how many other items could be expired? And my god, think of the children, what if the item does not have an expiration date?
For the next several days my wife was under orders from her grandmother to review every piece of food in their pantry for expired food that could be thrown away. If there was no way to tell what the expiration date was, my wife was made to call the manufacturer to confirm that she wasn't just looking in the wrong place or that there isn't another way to verify batch.
Fuck Florida
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday October 22 2019, @01:28PM
It never ceases to amaze me how many people think expiration dates on canned food mean something. Canned food is stable - that's the whole point of canning. So long as the can isn't punctured, the contents will remain good almost indefinitely. The expiration date is there primarily to get stores (and individuals) to throw away perfectly good food and buy more. It *might* start to taste funny eventually, as chemical degradation slowly breaks down the complex molecules but that's usually no noticeable until long after the expiration date.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 22 2019, @10:35AM
But SPAM is forever.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 22 2019, @10:41AM
That's the danger of centralization, which unfettered capitalism promotes. As Amazon forces others out of the market, it becomes the sole supplier. Once it has a lock on the market, it can extract monopoly rents. Then, because profit maximization is the other thing capitalism promotes, corners start to be cut and liberties are taken. Selling expired food is one of them. Because what are you going to do, buy from somebody else? hahahaha
Teach yourself how to grow/raise/forage your own food, then do. It's the only way to be sure, and the feeling of freedom in knowing you'll never starve will be profound.
Washington DC delenda est.